Time to call in a professional….

NB:This update originally appeared on crowdfunding website Kickstarter on 4th June 2013 and was intended for backers of the successful campaign to fund the publication of Finding Arun, my debut novel.

Afternoon Team Kickstarter,

Hope you are all doing well and my deepest apologies for the radio silence.

I am in a fabulous mood today for two reasons. Firstly, it’s sunny, and since I’m in London this is a miracle (yes, even in June!). Secondly, and more importantly, I’ve finally finished editing the second draft of Finding Arun and it has been packed off to the professional editor – hurrah! Excellent timing if I do say so myself…

The manuscript grew by almost 10,000 words during the last round of editing, which may explain why it took a lot longer than expected, but I’m confident that it has improved since the original draft, which is of course the most important thing. I expect to receive the editors comments back on, or before, 12th July and will then resume life as a hermit to work through the feedback and make yet more improvements. I was going to post a video update, but after a manic final few days of editing I currently resemble the bird lady (you know the type, trench coat tramp with crazy hair who insists on feeding the pigeons) so I figured I would save that until next time!

Over the next couple of weeks I shall (finally!) be issuing the Kickstarter surveys and prepping what I can for the delivery of rewards, kicking off the cover design process for both the first and special edition covers, blogging like a lunatic when my new site goes live at the start of next week, and finalising details for the very exciting launch party. Which reminds me, if you have an invitation to the launch party as part of your reward, put Saturday 28th September 2013 in your diaries NOW. More details to follow in due course.

Thanks to everyone who gave examples of books where characters had changed name following the last update; these were a great help and gave me the confidence to proceed with the name change without being overly cautious about annoying my readers or being unconventional. It also gave me another idea with regards to actual arrangement of the book and it’s now in two parts.

Keep watching this space and always, thanks again for all of your support.